1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a glass vessel crusher for crushing a glass bottle or the like into fragments in a proper size.
2. Description of Related Art
It has been a general habit that a glass vessel such as a glass bottle or the like is used and then thrown away without recycling because a recycling system for the glass vessel has not been hitherto established. Such a habit of using and throwing away the glass vessel has caused a vain use of resources and has been a factor of environmental contamination. The recycling of glass bottles has been particularly shunned because they have a bulky body, so that the physical distribution cost is increased and the cost required for recycling is also heightened. In order to overcome this disadvantage, there has been conventionally adopted a method that glass bottles are finely crushed using a glass-bottle crusher and then recycled in a state where their bulkiness is reduced.
As a conventional glass bottle crusher have been known a propeller-type crusher and a squash-type crusher. In the propeller-type crusher, a glass bottle is collided against a propeller rotating at a high speed, so that it is finely crushed by an impact force at the collision. On the other hand, in the squash-type crusher, for example, a glass bottle is sandwiched between two iron plates, and then is squashed by pressing the iron plates so as to be approached to each other.
In the propeller-type crusher, a glass bottle is excessively finely crushed, and thus excessively-fine glass fragments of the glass bottle are generated. If this type of crusher is placed on a street for example, there would occur a new environmental problem that these excessively-fine glass fragments are scattered in the street.
Further, the fragments of the glass bottle which have been withdrawn are required to be washed with water in a glass factory to remove foreign matters such as metal from the fragments. In this case, fragments whose size is below several millimeters are frequently required to be discarded on the basis of a requirement for water administration. Therefore, if the fragments of a glass bottle are excessively fined by the crusher, most of the fragments which have been withdrawn must be discarded, and thus there occurs a problem that all of glass bottles which have been withdrawn with much labor can not be effectively used.
On the other hand, the squash-type crusher has the following disadvantage that a tremendous noise occurs in a crushing operation, and glass fragments are liable to be scattered at the throw-in side for a glass bottle. Therefore, this type of crusher is unsuitable to be placed in a street in consideration of security and environment problem.